1. “Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“I do.”
2. “Let not the believers take disbelievers for their friends in preference to believers. Whoso doeth that hath no connection with Allah unless (it be) that ye but guard yourselves against them, taking (as it were) security.” — Qur’an 3:28
3. “Allah said next, ‘unless you indeed fear a danger from them,’ [or as above, ‘unless it be that ye but guard yourselves against them’] meaning, except those believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers. In this case, such believers are allowed to show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, ‘We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.’ Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, ‘The Tuqyah [taqiyya, or religious deception] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection.'” — Ibn Kathir’s commentary on Qur’an 3:28
4. “Let not the believers take the disbelievers as patrons, rather than, that is, instead of, the believers – for whoever does that, that is, [whoever] takes them as patrons, does not belong to, the religion of, God in anyway – unless you protect yourselves against them, as a safeguard (tuqātan, ‘as a safeguard’, is the verbal noun from taqiyyatan), that is to say, [unless] you fear something, in which case you may show patronage to them through words, but not in your hearts: this was before the hegemony of Islam and [the dispensation] applies to any individual residing in a land with no say in it.” — the Tafsir al-Jalalayn on Qur’an 3:28
“Update: Quran can be used in courtrooms,” by Eric J.S. Townsend in the Greensboro News-Record:
GREENSBORO “” Muslims can now swear on the Quran when called as witnesses in North Carolina courtrooms, a Wake County judge ruled Thursday.
The decision represents a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, which sued the state after two Guilford County judges rejected an offer from an Islamic center to provide county courthouses with free copies.
“The highest aim of every legal contest is the search for truth,” Wake Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway wrote in an 18-page opinion. “To require pious and faithful practitioners of religions other than Christianity to swear oaths in a form other than the form most meaningful to them would thwart the search for the truth.
“It would elevate form over substance.”
So now North Carolinians can swear to tell the truth on a book that has been interpreted by its mainstream commentators as allowing for deceptive words to be spoken to unbelievers. Form over substance, all right.